Christianity Today: Atheism is the only rational outlook.

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The hilarious thing to me is that more atheists, arguably far smaller in number than theists, spend more time at Christian websites than Christians do. Now, why is that?

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1) Athiests are more likely to have a computer.2) Athiests are more likely to have a wide range of interests3) Athiests are more likely to be able to handle exposure to viewpoints unlike their own and often seek them out.3) Many, many, many Christian websites are unintentionally hilarious.

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Europe is nearly all secularized, and of those people that aren't, the "believers" tend to be very lukewarm and ill-informed about what they believe in.

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Funny, it is my understanding that Europeans tend to be much better educated and informed than Americans about world religions (and just about anything else, actually), since many European countries have mandatory religious education in schools.Can you back up your claim?

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In other words, many of them believe in God because the just kind of grew up in it.

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...and this is different from America how, exactly?Edited by AdminPhat, : fixed quote

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People with clout can only maintain secular ideas? That sounds a bit fascist don't you think?

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I might have a superstitious idea that the Second Coming of Christ is going to happen in 2008, but only if certain world events happen. If I become President, would it be OK for me to enact policies designed to bring about those world events, even though they involve fomenting wars and dismantling environmental protection laws?If not, why not? I would only be using my clout to further what I believe to be the most important event in history.

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Some say the same thing about evolution.

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They say it about the moon landing and the Halocaust, too, but it doesn't make them right.

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And yet they don't stalk Hindu or Sikh websites. Why do you suppose that is? They all teach exclusivity just as Judeo-Christian worldview does. Why then are they more concerned with Judeo-Christian ideals?

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Hindus and Sikhs don't try to convert me or anyone I know, and they don't tell me I'm going to hell for believing differently from them. They don't try to meddle in my sex life, my married life, or my education. They don't set themselves up as arbiters of morality only to have leader after leader be revealed as engaging in exactly the behaviors they condemn everyone else for.It is the ignorance, arrogance, and hypocrisy all in one package, juggs.Christians make it so incredibly easy. If they just didn't try to tell everybody else how to live they wouldn't get near the flak from Athiests they currently do.But anyway, Christians enjoy all sorts of benefits and perks in this country that Athiests don't get just because they call themselves Christian. Stop whining becasue you aren't universally adored.

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But I've never really understood why nuns rapping kids on the knuckles translates into: There is no God.

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It doesn't.If you still don't know how athiests come to their disbelief after all this time, I don't think you are able to learn it.

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The nearest Cathedral cities that I can think of are Ely and Norwich, and their Cathedrals certainly function for their original purposes, as do all the British Cathedrals. They all have congregations, Bishops, Deans, canons, choirs and choir schools, and all the trappings.

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Let's not forget little village churches, too!

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I am personally curious why some people are so resistant to belief...as if they are afraid they will look stupid or something.

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It has nothing at all to do with looking stupid.It has everything to do with actually being stupid.Making decisions based upon reason or evidence or thinking through the consequences for me and others seems like a good way to go.Instead making decisions based upon "woo" or what somebody else told me "the big woo in the sky" wants me to do seems foolish and thoughtless at best and downright dangerous at worst.It is a lot easier to not take personal responsibility for your own choices and instead "give up your life to God", but I think that's ultimately just lazy.

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Well it is a good thing lewis and clark, or columbus didn't think that way.

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Huh? All of them used evidence and reason to achieve what they did.

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This kind of thought process has been expressed many times in this forum. This is a huge mistake. At no time are we giving up our personal responsibility for our choices.

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In a way you do, though, when you abandon reason and logic and evidence in favor of "woo" or what somebody told you the "big woo in the sky" says he wants you to do or be like.If you really took reponsibility for you actions, you wouldn't let these things get in the way of logic and reason and evidence.

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And if you are truely giving up your life to God, then things do not get lazy. things like forgiveness and helping others, or loving them, come at a cost of putting aside our own personal desires.

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That is not the kind of "lazy" I was referring to.I am talking about "lazy thinking".By this, I mean things like not being able to follow through to the logical consequences of claims, not being able to discern when claims are contradictory; in general, not being able to think critically or ask appropriate questions before granting tentative assent to a claim.

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If you disagree with the premise that Jesus is the answer, you better have a darn good reason why you can boldly proclaim your own intellect as the answer. Call me stupid, but I believe that my intellect left to its own devices inevitably disintegrates into Ego, Selfishness, and self-centered versus altruistic patterning.

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You are setting up this dichotomy unfairly."Jesus is the answer" is not the default position.The default position is that "we have an intellect", imperfect as it may be.Nobody denies that we have an intellect, so it is actually the people who boldly say "Jesus/Mohammed/Buddha/L. Ron Hubbard is the answer" who need to justify their position.

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the default position of we know nothing....lets attempt to find our own answer

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That's also what religions do, except they don't need to bother with reality when coming up with those answers.

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Some people feel comfortable with positive truth claims as answers.

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Other people are never satisfied with any answer.

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Since when does people's comfort level with something determine if it is true or not?

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Same could be said when searching for God, and answers.

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Sure. However, you can't find God using evidence and reason. You can only find God through faith.

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What do you think, anyone who believes in God is a dummy, and does so without any evidence, and reason?

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Not using evidence and reason doesn't make someone a dummy.It means they aren't using evidence and reason.It's sort of like people not knowing how to use calculus. Both advanced math (like calculus) and the use of evidence and reason (the scientific method) to evaluate claims of fact/reality are simply tools.I don't know how to use calculus. I don't know how to use lots of different tools. That doesn't make me a dummy, it just makes me ignorant of how to use many different tools.The problem is, though, that being able to use logic and reason is paramount to being able to make good decisions in our lives in this technologically-advanced, information-age society we currently live in.Most Americans don't know the first thing about using the tool of critical thinking because they've never been taught. You can be damn sure that the more radical religious elements in this country want to keep such tools as far away from their followers as they possibly can. Even the moderate Catholic Church has always had a lukewarm relationship with scientific thinking.

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If a big woo in the sky told me to do something, other than what was already in heart, I would tell him to go fuck himself.

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You would tell God to go fuck himself?

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huh?

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evidence of what?

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If you really took responsibility for your actions, you wouldn't let what somebody told you God wants you to believe or do (or what you think the Bible, or God, wants you believe or do to) get in the way of what reason and logic and evidence are showing you, or could show you if you looked.You wouldn't let your irrational beliefs (faith) override or supplant reason and logic and evidence (or lack thereof).

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Well, I would like to think that doesn't apply to me.

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I'd say that in my experience, you are just as guilty of such lapses as the next religious person.

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Well, God finds you. But then there is evidence of that, all be it subjective, and maybe even objective.

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No, there is no evidence.That's why you need faith.Only people with weak faith need evidence to believe in God.

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It is my quest to find a happy medium.

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How would you go about instructing people to use critical thinking skills but only let them apply them to certain ideas and not others?

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If I didn't like what He was saying.
He would have to show me, why He was right, and why I was wrong.

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Are you suggesting that God is wrong sometimes?

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That just may be you not being able to follow through to the logical consequences of claims, not being able to discern when claims are contradictory; in general, not being able to think critically or ask appropriate questions before granting tentative assent to a claim.

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Rat, come on.People regularly tell you in the midst of discussion that you are losing track of your own arguments, are unable to understand analogies, contradict yourself, and in general rather frequently fail to make sense.Why do you think this happens?Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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To have a friend.

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Well, it is certainly refreshing to see a believer admit that they have invented an imaginary friend and called it "god".Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Just because it is subjective, oes not make it non-evidence.

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It makes it useless as evidence.If you can't show me, or anyone else, your "subjective evidence", then how can we tell the difference between it and delusion, or something somebody made up, or an error?We can't tell the difference. Therefore, subjective evidence isn't useful for anything other than forming and perpetuating ideas which may or may not be based in reality.

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You got a point there.

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Yepers.

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Can you be more specific?
Maybe even bring this over to the evidence and faith thread?
This is an interesting question, and I think we address some of it already.

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I wrote: You seemed to be saying that you wanted to "strike a happy medium" between people using critical thinking skills and at the same time not wanting them to use them "too much", possibly keeping them from applying them to religious doctrine or their own religious beliefs.

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I can't know the answer to that. The bible says He is not wrong.
I can perceive Him as being wrong in my ignorance.
In other words, there are many things I do not understand, and many times I even get angry at God.

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But you just said that you would tell God to go fuck himself if He came down from heaven and told you to do something you didn't already know in your heart to be right. You said that He would have to convince you that He was right and you were wrong.Are you changing your mind about what you would say to "the big woo in the sky"?

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1. Sometimes I make mistakes (one of the few to actually admit it)

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Sure, we all make mistakes.In my experience with you, it is very, very, very difficult to get you to see your mistakes. Often, I have been in a thread where you are being told by 4 or 6 other people that you have made certain specific errors and yet you refuse to or are unable to see where you've erred. Then you get annoyed at being nagged at and start making flippant, contentless responses to people's more and more emphatic and strident efforts to explain. It is at these times that it appears that you are just digging in your heels and refusing to correct yourself and are getting snotty to avoid having to do so.This is one of the biggest reasons people get so incredibly frustrated with you.

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2. Sometimes people do not understand me, whether it be expressing myself incorrectly, or them reading incorrectly. I have had people explain what I meant to others, many times.

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Well, expressing oneself clearly and accurately in writing here is a big part of effective debate at EvC. However, losing track of your own arguments, contradicting yourself, and not understanding analogies are not related to writing clearly.

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3. People do not even understand what is written in the bible, as did I, and until they have an encounter with God, they will continue to be ignorant.

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That is insider-mentality and it is bullshit.There are many, many people who claim to have had an "encounter" with god and are plenty ignorant of the content and meaning of the bible. We "encounter" them here on EvC all the time.

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4. A forum, is not the best communication tool sometimes, when there is too much to say. Some of the things we discuss, take years to understand.

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Sure, but that's not really what I was talking about.Edited by nator, : No reason given.